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Concept
Software development effort estimation
Summary
In software development, effort estimation is the process of predicting the most realistic amount of effort (expressed in terms of person-hours or money) required to develop or maintain software based on incomplete, uncertain and noisy input. Effort estimates may be used as input to project plans, iteration plans, budgets, investment analyses, pricing processes and bidding rounds.
Published surveys on estimation practice suggest that expert estimation is the dominant strategy when estimating software development effort.
Typically, effort estimates are over-optimistic and there is a strong over-confidence in their accuracy. The mean effort overrun seems to be about 30% and not decreasing over time. For a review of effort estimation error surveys, see. However, the measurement of estimation error is problematic, see Assessing the accuracy of estimates.
The strong overconfidence in the accuracy of the effort estimates is illustrated by the finding that, on average, if a software professional is 90% confident or "almost sure" to include the actual effort in a minimum-maximum interval, the observed frequency of including the actual effort is only 60-70%.
Currently the term "effort estimate" is used to denote as different concepts such as most likely use of effort (modal value), the effort that corresponds to a probability of 50% of not exceeding (median), the planned effort, the budgeted effort or the effort used to propose a bid or price to the client. This is believed to be unfortunate, because communication problems may occur and because the concepts serve different goals.
Software researchers and practitioners have been addressing the problems of effort estimation for software development projects since at least the 1960s; see, e.g., work by Farr and Nelson.
Most of the research has focused on the construction of formal software effort estimation models. The early models were typically based on regression analysis or mathematically derived from theories from other domains.
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